EU parliament soundly defeats anti-piracy bill that could threaten internet freedom

   The European Union parliament soundly defeated the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The margin of the defeat was quite large. 478 voted against the bill and 165 abstained while only 39 voted in favor of the bill.
  A conservative party in the parliament tried to postpone the vote until after the European Court of Justice had ruled whether the act poses a threat to civil liberties. The agreement has already been signed by Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea,. New Zealand and the United States as well as the EU and member states.  Some of these signatories may now decide to jettison the deal or try to renegotiate it.
   Oxfam claimed that ACTA could very well make life saving drugs very costly for those in poor countries:. "ACTA could have made life-saving drugs much costlier for the world's poorest, resulting in devastating consequences for their health. With Europe's rejection, we're now hugely relieved that ACTA is going nowhere,"  What is represented as necessary for free trade is of course usually the opposite. Key to free trade and ensuring that markets do not interfere with monopoly rights are intellectual property rights such as patents.

. EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, who represented the bloc in ACTA negotiations said: "With the rejection of ACTA, the need to protect the backbone of Europe's economy across the globe, our innovation, our creativity, our ideas - our intellectual property - does not disappear," While some claim that ACTA is dead it will no doubt arise again from its ashes. Monopoly rights not free markets are crucial to modern capitalism's profitability. Free markets are defended for ideological purposes and to argue against economic policies that the most powerful capitalist bodies do not like. For more see this article.

Google Facebook and Twitter oppose Online Piracy Act

   A New York Times op-ed has called SOPA the Great Firewall of America and noted that the bill is quite broad, too broad for critics. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is supported by Hollywood corporations.'
    Google, Facebook, and Twitter see the legislation as threatening them. The co-founder of claimed that the act would rank the U.S. with the most oppressive nations in the world. Perhaps the U.S. is trying to catch up and surpass China in Internet control. Of course the Chinese are not noted for their enforcing laws against piracy!
     Co-founders of  Twitter also lashed out at the legislation claiming that the act gave federal regulators too much power to censor the web. Google, Amazon, Facebook, and others are threatening to turn their pages black and with Internet censorship warnings that will ask users to contact politicians about voting on the bill.
  There is a Senate debate scheduled for January 24 on the bill. Perhaps the bill will have been changed by then. If it isn't there could be big news before the debate even starts if  the Big Guns on the Internet take on the Hollywood Internet Copyright Protection Gang.  For more see this article and here as well.
 
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